Commentary, Journalism, Thought Space

Lib Dems

Earlier today I reacted to a snide tweet from a Lib Dem campaigner in a way that has left me uneasy. Mark Valladeres, who tweets as @HonLadyMark because his wife is Baroness Scott of Needham Market, accused me of poor communication skills, and I bit. Hard.

Now all political campaigners will tell you about how patronising Lib Dems have sneered at them, and in this age of social media it is all too easy to let it bother you. I usually don’t, but that is no excuse.

Mr Valladeres suggests that I learn to communicate better, after his Lib Dem colleague, my successor as a County Councillor, Caroline Page, warped the phrasing of a tweet to suggest that I believed news should be faked. As someone who takes the power of the media and the dedication the majority of journalists give to balance very seriously, I was pretty insulted by that. Councillor Page has form for deliberately misrepresenting me, so I snipped back at her.

Mr Valladeres’ intervention shouldn’t have rattled me, but as someone who made a living communicating, I objected to being told that Lib Dem lies were my own fault.

Now it is no secret that I have a very low opinion of Liberal Democrat activists, especially those in Woodbridge. Their behaviour during my 2004 by-election victory confirmed to me that they are the dirtiest and most hypocritical of campaigners, bending electoral law to the very edge, and indeed in one case breaking it, though this was never proven.

Among their many misdeeds during that election were telephone calls to Tory supporters suggesting that a 24 year old candidate was simply too young to be able to comprehend the complexity of Council business – a suggestion that was proven hypocritical by the first Lib Dem County Councillor to welcome me to the Council once I was elected, with the words “It’s so nice to have some young people on the Council.” They were, I recollect, spoken by Cllr Ros Scott. I’ve never forgotten the hypocrisy.

Another misdeed was when a former Lib Dem Town Councillor encountered one of my more senior leafleters on polling day. Lying through his teeth, he told this elderly gentleman that he was breaking the law by leafleting on polling day, and that if he didn’t throw his leaflets in the bin, he would call the police and have him arrested. Disgusting and disgraceful behaviour towards a man in his eighties who was upset and frightened by the incident. It is, of course, completely legal to deliver leaflets on polling day, and all political parties do so.

The same former Lib Dem Town Councillor was himself later seen wandering around the High School with a camera, attempting to take photographs of the polling station. Quite why was never clear.

These are merely three incidents from one election campaign. I fought six election campaigns in Woodbridge, five as a Tory (one as an Independent when I was just 21). In every single one of those election campaigns, the Lib Dems lied, cheated and claimed credit for someone elses achievements. None of this will surprise anyone who has ever been involved in an election campaign against the dirtiest party of them all. They even put in their campaign manual to “‘be wicked, act shamelessly, stir endlessly“.

So in conclusion, I shouldn’t have told Mr Valladeres to “Bog Off” or called him patronising. I shouldn’t let their sneering attitude, or snide reference to long past events, get to me. After all, having campaigned hard for Brexit, and seen the Lib Dem Remain Fanatics lose 375 deposits in the latest General Election, I should console myself with the knowledge that at least the rest of the country sees them for what they are – shameless, wicked, malicious, nasty, and losers.